Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
But, God, I loved how he’d started using that nickname for my kid. I knew a guy once who always insisted on referring to her as “your kid,” in a way that always felt to me that he had absolutely no intention of ever wanting to get to know her or be involved with her. And my daughter and I were a package deal.
Callow’s comfort with her was clear whenever he discussed the situation we were in.
I mean, knowing that I would want to keep options secret from Daph was really intuitive. Because I knew my kid. She would be packing up a bag to try out that weird survivalist camp called Hailstorm. Or, yeah, even staying at this biker clubhouse.
I wouldn’t say those ideas were permanently off my list of choices. I just wasn’t sure I needed them to be the first line of defense. For all we knew, the attack was isolated and wouldn’t happen again. Until I had evidence of there definitely being major risk to us moving forward, I wasn’t comfortable completely upending our lives to live in, as I understood it, shipping containers behind electric fences with attack dogs and men and women walking around with machine guns.
I wouldn’t lie, the idea of staying at the clubhouse was definitely tempting. Not necessarily for the protection aspect, though.
Oh, no.
It had nothing to do with that.
And everything to do with what had just happened with Callow in his room.
I honestly wasn’t even sure how things had progressed so quickly. One moment, we were just sitting close. The next, I was dry humping him like a teenager. The next after that, he had me bare from the waist down and was devouring me and driving me up through an orgasm that I swore let me see through time and space for a moment.
Then I got to taste him too, be in control of his desire and pleasure.
If there’d been any concerns on my part that my incredibly long dry spell might have meant that I might have forgotten how to… do stuff, well, that, deep “fuck” he uttered afterward cleared away all those worries.
Maybe it had been selfish to indulge in that with Callow when so much was now going on. But, damn, I felt so much more clear-headed afterward.
“I’m leaning toward guards in our house,” I told him.
“I figured that might be the choice. Less disruption for Daph.”
“Yeah. I mean, I have to ask her. She might feel weird about people being in her space all the time.”
“Well, you can have your choice of guards. Whoever makes you guys the most comfortable.”
He said it in a hesitant way. Almost like he was concerned that our choice wouldn’t be him.
“You included?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he agreed, tentatively hopeful.
“Then, obviously, we’re going to want you. But, I mean, I understand if it can’t be you all of the time. If you have other things to do.”
“I don’t.”
He was so quick with that. Like even if he did have other things going on, he would move them to accommodate taking care of us.
“Okay,” I said, sucking in a deep breath, pretending my whole body wasn’t doing a little joyful dance at the idea of Callow practically living with us for the time being. “Let’s go talk to Daphne,” I said, running my hands down my body, making sure everything was in place. “How’s my hair?” I asked.
To that, Callow shot me a bemused smile. “Yeah, you’re gonna wanna fix that,” he said.
I yanked it out of its ponytail, then quickly smoothed it into a neater one before following Callow to the door.
When we made our way out of his room, there were several other bikers in the clubhouse that hadn’t been there before.
Daphne was sitting at the bar, legs dancing, casted arm set on the bar top, watching as a tall, handsome guy with golden skin sketched on a sheet of paper.
Croft, I assumed.
And the other twin, Rune, was standing a few feet away talking to Sully.
“Any luck?” Callow asked as he walked up behind Croft.
“Getting there,” Croft said, erasing an eyebrow and trying again.
I glanced down at the paper, seeing a mostly fully-formed face looking back at me. He wasn’t as traditionally good-looking as the guy with the dragon neck tattoo. This one had a very distinct nose that hooked at bit at the end with a prominent bump on the bridge, eyes that were set just a little too widely apart. But I guess they kind of had to be to accommodate his nose. His lips were thin and he had a very square jaw.
“Is that a mistake with the ears?” I asked, noticing how obviously misaligned they were.
“No,” Daphne said, shaking her head. “They were really different. He had really low symmetry,” she added.
She would know. There’d been some sort of filter on a social media app that rated faces on their level of symmetry and she’d been wildly happy when hers had been very close to perfect. Ever since then, she’d occasionally mention someone’s symmetry. Which made me start to notice that kind of thing.